In the Faber Book of Diaries for this date (December 13th) in 1943, Henry “Chips” Channon is recorded as having a “Proustian moment” in a London shop.
Channon (1897–1958) was an American-born British MP and socialite who married into the Guinnesses and is now best remembered for keeping a journal – first rumours of which were said to have made some members of high society turn “white” with fear – that would be published only after his death.
The original Proustian moment was a semi-fictionalised one in which the eponymous French author had a deluge of involuntary memory unleashed by the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea (although in real-life prosaically, it’s said the catalyst was marmalade on toast).
Channon’s Proustian moment was more literal. It involved meeting an old friend of his and Proust’s, a woman they had both considered a vision of female perfection, but who was now barely identifiable:
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“In a Bond Street jewellers, I saw an extraordinary marionette of a woman – or was it a man? It wore grey, flannel trousers, a wide leather belt, masculine overcoat and a man’s brown felt hat, and had a really frightening appearance.
“Bundi [Channon’s German Shepherd] began to growl, and as I secretly examined this terrifying apparition, I recognised Gladys Marlborough, once the world’s most beautiful woman ... the toast of Paris, the love of Proust, the belle amie of Anatole France.
“I hadn’t seen her since my wedding, but there seemed no reason to cut her, and I went up to her and smiled, and put out my hand which she took shrinkingly and then, breaking into French (as she always did), said, ‘Est-ce que je vous connais, Monsieur?’
“’Yes,’ I said, ‘I am Chips.’ She looked at me, stared vacantly with those famous turquoise eyes that once drove men insane with desire, and muttered: ‘Je n’ai jamais entendu ce nom la’ (‘I’ve never heard that name’); [then] she flung down a ruby clip she was examining and bolted from the shop…”.
After that, for Channon, came the deluge: “I remembered how we had been allies for twenty years or more, how she used to telephone me every morning; how I used to give her sugar in the last war when she was still dazzlingly beautiful; and how we used to lunch with Proust; and of the story that D’Annunzio fainted when he saw her, such was her beauty, then of the Blenheim days ... Le temps qui coule (‘Time flies’).”
[ Paris Mismatch – Frank McNally on a notorious dinner party of 100 years agoOpens in new window ]
Marlborough (1881–1977) had been born in Paris, to American parents. She lost her father early, first to prison when he killed his wife’s lover, and later to insanity and early death.
She acquired the Marlborough surname when marrying the English duke of that title, a Churchill, after a long apprenticeship as his mistress in Blenheim Palace.
It was not a happy marriage. By the time one of the Churchills’ Irish cousins – Anita Leslie of the storied Monaghan family – visited her in the early 1930s, Gladys was in the habit of showing off a revolver she kept to deter visits of the duke to her bedroom.
Leslie’s 1981 memoir includes a startling description of the woman who had enchanted Proust. Perfect as she may have been already, alas, Gladys had felt the need for plastic surgery when only 22, to keep up with the fashions. This did not turn out well.
“As Grecian profiles were then the done thing,” wrote Leslie, “she allowed wax to be inserted on the bridge of her slightly tip-tilted nose, with dire results. The wax ran down slowly under her skin, dragging her lovely face into a frog shape. Later the wax had to be cut out ... but nothing could pull her face back into place.”
Leslie’s first glimpse of the famed beauty was unforgettable: “Finally we heard, not footsteps, but the claw-clatter of many little dogs ... In came the duchess, surrounded by a moving carpet of King Charles spaniels.
“Gladys Marlborough was extraordinary to look at. Absolutely hideous and yet exotic, with golden hair swept back in a bun and strange blue eyes staring out of the ruin of that stretched face. She advanced in her dirty old clothes, shook hands and waved us graciously to chairs.”
Despite the turn of facial fortune, Leslie found her much the happier of the couple. The duke was visibly miserable. Gladys, meanwhile, entertained herself and guests with memories of countless former lovers. She had not married, apparently, “until I had been to bed with every prime minister in Europe and most of the kings”.
The Marlboroughs soon divorced, after which Gladys moved to a farm in the English midlands, gradually withdrew from public life, replaced the dogs with cats, and became a recluse.
By the 1960s, she was suffering the same mental illness that had claimed her father (and his mother). She spent her final years in St Andrew’s hospital Northampton, dying there aged 96. Fellow inmates included Lucia Joyce. It’s unclear if they ever met.
